DOJ head AG, Eric Holder apparently recused himself from the FBI investigation “to avoid any potential appearance of a conflict of interest.” The investigation has been conducted under the direction of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and the supervision of the deputy attorney general, James M. Cole.

So why is the GOP/Roger Ailes not drooling? A casual observer might suppose the GOP is suddenly reluctant to remind us of their institutional hypocrisy. Obama, as Senator, supported a federal shield law and co-sponsored 2007 legislation that was eventually killed by a Republican filibuster.

No, there must be another reason. Since when have Republicans EVER shied away from hypocrisy? Perhaps they realize it’s perfectly legal thanks to the Great Adventures of Bush and Cheney.

“The explanation might be, in part, the angry cries from Republican members of Congress over the Associated Press reporting that appears to have triggered the Justice Department probe. In May 2012, the AP described how a double agent had infiltrated al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen and neutralized a plot to bomb an airliner. Multiple Republicans insisted at the time that the leak might constitute a criminal case and demanded a tough FBI investigation.

Their anger was largely directed at the alleged leakers, unlike the cries of “treason” directed at the New York Times when the paper published sensitive information about Bush-era anti-terror surveillance. Even so, conservatives are now in the odd position of implicitly defending the media’s rights against the imperative of national security secrecy, a cause that didn’t interest them much when the FBI sought media phone records during the Bush years.” Source

It may well be that there is no one reason. Republicans have attacked Obama for virtually EVERYTHING he has done or thought about doing, whether real or imagined. Over the past 5 years, they’ve covered every position. There aren’t any positions left that don’t require doing a 180 on something they whined about in the past. Republicans have no clothes.

Did Obama know about the acquisition of the AP phone records? Probably not. But I don’t care. Now would be the time for him to fire some folks and pass a new shield law.

Tonight’s must-see TV is on MSNBC at 7 pm: “Hubris: The Selling of the Iraq War” uses the occasion of the upcoming tenth anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq for an unusual exercise in media truth-telling, hosted by Rachel Maddow. The documentary is based on a book co-authored by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

In the documentary, many of those who were sources for the book “Hubris” appear on camera for the first time. One of them, Mark Rossini, was then an FBI counter-terrorism agent detailed to the CIA. He was assigned the task of evaluating a Czech intelligence report that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the attack on the World Trade Towers. Cheney repeatedly invoked the report as evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11. “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April,” Cheney said on Meet the Press on Dec. 9, 2001. But the evidence used to support the claim–a supposed photograph of Atta in Prague the day of the alleged meeting—had already been debunked by Rossini. He analyzed the photo and immediately saw it was bogus: the picture of the Czech “Atta” looked nothing like the real terrorist. It was a conclusion he relayed up the chain, assuming he had put the matter to rest. Then he heard Cheney endorsing the discredited report on national television. “I remember looking at the TV screen and saying, ‘What did I just hear?’ And I–first time in my life, I actually threw something at the television because I couldn’t believe what I just heard,” Rossini says.

I think I’ve just eye-witnessed the spontaneous birth of a new political party and in the most unlikely of places – Utah.

But, hey. Why not Utah? Are we not the home of political mavericks?

Did we Utahns not replace a senior, sitting senator at convention (Bennett R-UT) with an insane, tea-party nobody? Did we not also deliver the only sane GOP candidate for president (Jon Huntsman)?

That’s right. So no one should be surprised widely popular, 2-term, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is running for President. And its about time. Even if this time around is just a warm up, it will be fun.Follow @PresidentRocky

That was two Wednesday’s ago. The next day, folks began to gather at Rocky’s house in Salt Lake. Paul Zieitz came out from Washington and a nascent steering committee kicked into high gear. The first state committee was tele-formed and a plan to get on the ballot in all fifty states was hatched around a dining room table and a speaker phone. (If you would like to form a committee in your state, contact Paul (end of press release)

This is not at all how I expected a third party to form. I always thought it would be a well funded, meticulously-planned, institutionally sponsored effort. Instead, it just happened. And like the Occupy Movement, no one owns it and it has no platform…yet.

The founding and interim steering committee are made up of the most unlikely characters: more women than men, all busy and passionate, but otherwise ‘unremarkable.’

The first, monumental task ahead is to get on the ballot in California. That means 103,000 Justice party registrations or approx 200K signatures BY JAN 2…two weeks? If that miracle happens, the other 49 states should be a cinch. Stranger things have happened.

Hey, people are winter camping in public parks in every major city in the world and one of the major American political parties seems about to crash and burn along with its media arm (Murdoch). A political vacuum is forming.

Its crazy. Everything is crazy. The rules are changing. A Dkos recommend can change the world. But it feels right and it feels unstoppable.

While Herman Cain’s popularity among the most ignorant group of people (Republicans) on the planet (I call them Hobbits), and the rest of us were getting our panties all in a bunch over it, Rachel Maddow figured it out… PROOF she is the smartest political pundit in the world.

“But at this point in the campaign no one has figured out that this is not politics. This is art.”

The evidence:

Still has no real campaign team, no state offices

Herman Cain's Campaign is SMOKIN!

Claims his 999 plan came from bank teller on Chagrin Blvd in Pepper Pike, Ohio?

I want to apologize if I have ever suggested that Republicans and Tea Baggers are stupid. They are instead perhaps simply uninterested in fact.

Yet again, I met the nicest Right Winger last night who thought Obama passed TARP (WRONG) and that it cost taxpayers 3 trillion dollars (FAIL). I have yet to meet a single Republican who knows that almost all of TARP has been paid back and will likely result in a profit for the Fed.

He was also surprised to learn that the bulk of the Obama Stimulus bill was in the form of tax cuts. He almost fell off his chair when I told him Obama has actually cut the budget.

This is an actual voice mail received at Rep John Lewis‘ congressional office. The caller calls Obama and John Lewis “Nigger” a bunch of times. Is he a Tea “Partyer?” Sure sounds like one to me. But for the use of the “N”-word, the language and references are IDENTICAL to protest signs we see at KKK meetings Tea Party rallies.

Defenders of The Tea Party will argue that this caller does not represent them. The point is that the nature and origins (anti-Obama) of the Tea Party movement purposefully and UNAPOLOGETICALLY, appeals to and targets these kind of people, racists.

Classic example: Tea Party favorite for New York Governor, Carl Paladino refuses to apologize for racially charged comments. Why? Because HE KNOWS that racial rhetoric “appeals to the lowest instincts in man” and to “a mob mentality,” and the racist core of the Tea Party.

In other news today, Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell has declared April to be “Confederate History Month,… McDonnell says that the Confederate history “should not be forgotten, but…remembered, [that its leaders] fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today.”

Everyone knows the subject of “Confederate” means nothing more and nothing less than racism. So why?

WHY would a politician deliberatly associate himself with racism? Answer, to appeal to racists voters.

And THIS is why The Tea Party cannot produce a platform much less a coherent reason for hating Obama because “you can’t say it out load,” unless hiding behind and phone.

Orrin Hatch is a liar. A Liar is a person who tells LIES. Orrin Hatch has been telling demostrable lies for as long as I have been paying attention. Sadly, Utah Republicans continue to re-elect this liar. If Washington is broken, as much of the credit goes to Utah Republicans as the liar named Orrin Hatch himself.

I ask myself, do the Utahns who vote for Orrin Hatch hold him up to their children as a role model? Or do they have a different set of standards for politics?

Many will come to Orrin’s defense by saying that both parties lie, conveniently forgetting for the moment that there are different kinds of lies. Anyone who has kids knows this. “There are lies and there are damned lies.” Good parents put some real thought into the subject in order to raise better, more honest kids.

So for those of you who would like to dismiss Orrin Hatch’s deliberate, unapologetic, and malicious lies with statements like; “all politicians lie,” I challenge you to grow up, get real. I ask you, did you VOTE for those other liars, or did you vote for Orrin Hatch the Liar?

Give me an example of where any Democratic Senator has perpetrated such a string of BIG lies as does Orrin Hatch, on the floor of the Senate or in print. And please use the same rules to evaluate lying as you might impart to your kids.